Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 9, 1995 TAG: 9510090095
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: GUM SPRING LENGTH: Medium
A Richmond man wants to preserve his old one-room schoolhouse as a museum that will show what a school for blacks looked like in the days of segregation.
Morris Hayden, 49, has recruited a team of people to raise money to rehabilitate the Shady Grove School, built around 1925 as an elementary school for rural black children about 30 miles west of Richmond. It closed in 1955.
The white frame schoolhouse was heated by a wood stove and had no indoor bathroom. It had one teacher for about 40 children.
``It is important for everybody to know their history and to preserve things related to their history,'' Hayden said. ``People are so determined to figure out what our future will be that we often fail to look at what our past has been.''
The purpose of the project is not to make anyone feel sorry for blacks who attended those inferior schools, but to make people understand that learning can flourish even under adverse conditions, he said.
``I'm proud of the basic education I received at old Shady Grove School,'' said Hayden, an automobile salesman.
``I started school in a one-room school in the country. My father went to the same school. And today I have a daughter who is majoring in engineering at North Carolina State University.''
The building needs some work. The porch is crumbling, the inside could stand some fresh paint, and the metal roof has at least one leaky spot.
The school is owned by the Shady Grove Baptist Church, which is celebrating its 123rd anniversary this month. If the school is rehabilitated, it could serve not only as a museum, but also as a meeting room for the nearby church, Hayden said.
Before launching a fund-raising drive, Hayden will try to have the Shady Grove School listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The school is one of the few ``Rosenwald'' schools in Virginia that have not been converted to another use.
A Rosenwald school was a public school for rural black children in the South that was built with money from the Julius Rosenwald Fund.
Rosenwald was a wealthy Jewish philanthropist from Chicago who established the fund in 1917. By the time of his death in 1932, thousands of Rosenwald schools had been built.
Kathleen Cabell, curator of the Goochland County Historical Society, has taken an interest in the Shady Grove School project. So has Saul Viener, special projects coordinator for the Jewish Community Federation, a Richmond charitable organization.
``Rosenwald was one of the great personalities of American life, let alone Jewish-American life,'' Viener said. ``It is important to remember that he felt a social responsibility that African-American children were worthy of receiving an education.''
by CNB